Clare Carolin

My work focuses on the intersection of contemporary art and various forms of state violence including socially detrimental urban overdevelopment and militarized force. I research how art, artists, architects, and urban planners have been implicated in the exercise of hard and soft state power, ‘inadmissible heritage’ in public collections, and artist monitoring by the state. Conversely, I explore visual histories of interracial solidarity and work to develop revisionist curatorial formats that reinterpret the art of the past.

My doctoral research combined contemporary art history and theory with security, intelligence, and media studies to investigate officially commissioned art during the Irish ‘Troubles’ and the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict. My monograph based on this study 'The Deployment of Art' will be published by Routledge in 2023.

I was Exhibitions Curator at the Hayward Gallery (1999-2007), Senior Curator at Modern Art Oxford (2009-10), and Deputy Head of the Curating Contemporary Art Department, Royal College of Art (2007-2014). Recent projects include 'The Surface of the World: Architecture and the Moving Image' (Museum of Contemporary Art and Design, Manila, Philippines, 2014-17); 'Spectres of Modernism: Artists Against Overdevelopment' (Bowater House/Raven Row, London 2017-18) and 'Open Plan: Communities in Contemporary Art' (South London Gallery, 2022) (co-edited with Carey Robinson). I have worked in a freelance and associate capacity with diverse visual arts organisations including Tate; Kettle’s Yard, Cambridge; South London Gallery and the Alytus Biennale (Lithuania).

My doctoral research combined contemporary art history and theory with security, intelligence, and media studies to investigate officially commissioned art during the Irish ‘Troubles’ and the 1982 Falklands/Malvinas conflict. The monograph based on this work appears in 2023 (Routledge) addressed to their art, heritage, intelligence, social movement, and media studies lists. This feeds directly into the design of my next research project which explores interracial solidarity tactics and visual activism linking Northern Ireland and Black America during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s. I will analyze contemporary art, political film, murals, and embodied protest actions to investigate how activists in Northern Ireland looked to the visual imagery of Black America as the basis for resistance and solidarity and ask if, and how that ‘look’ was returned. Planned research outputs for that project include a second monograph which will have wide appeal given current interest in interracial solidarity and anti-Imperialist struggle.